Forget My Name
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: Sloth lives a lie, understands truth, and likes the idea of hope. And Sloth knows all these things fade away. Companion to Northern Star.


**Anime!Sloth…just…wow. For all her wishes she knew they would never come true, and still she stayed with Dante. I think she kind of realized what would happen to her, that whatever she did she was a homunculus and that meant nothing was going to stop her from being sealed/killed- it even happened to Greed, and all the older homunculi before her. Maybe it had to do with her being the newest? She was kind of rational in a very…odd way. She's one of the characters I have a better understanding of. :D**

**I suppose this is a companion piece to Northern Star, but they're not exactly a series so one will make sense without the other. **

**Warnings: None.**

Juliet Douglas is at her desk, she is in the business of government. Juliet Douglas does not exist. Then again, neither does Sloth if she's going to be honest with herself. Sloth's in the business of getting the Stones, helping the Master, the business of death and lying. Sloth's business is also the truth.

She's found that if the truth can set people free, it also keeps others chained. The truth isn't always bad, it can be escaped if you are good and oh how Sloth is good- but she ends every day knowing what, not who, she is; the truth is one thing Sloth wants to either find or get rid of.

And if she gets rid of all the trouble and becomes human she can know who she is. Well, that sounds nice. It's what she holds onto but she knows the longer she holds on, the further she'll fall. She'd like to have hope lift her up and help her find the answers, but she knows how to find them herself; if Dante was going to make any of them human it wouldn't have taken her four hundred years to do it.

People in glass houses know their surroundings.

Sloth's surroundings are a neat office with sunlight and a soldier in the room handing in paperwork or whatnot. Human, of course. After a while they all begin to look the same.

Whoever he is, he doesn't know a thing, not that she could kill him before he could look up and not that his brave Fuhrer is the very sort of threat he's fighting and not that his military is nothing that he thinks it is at all. Unaware, as most humans are, and Sloth thinks that could be a nice quality to have.

Sloth, just ask her, she's a lie who sees the truth, and if you don't understand your own truth now you never will, Sloth will say; she won't say it because you'll never know her. Sloth doesn't think she wants that so much, a forced understanding of humanity.

Humanity. Sloth's seen what humanity calls itself; it isn't truly something you are born with or created without, it's a word that distinguishes between the species, it's a meaningless word now because those who don't have it can say they do and nothing can be done about it. It's nothing but a commodity. Sure, she has some "humanity" in her, but what is it going to do? Help anyone; make the humans understand; help herself? Sloth might be just a shell, but she understands. She can't do anything with this "humanity."

She thinks that might mean she doesn't deserve it.

Fine. Sloth can't pretend, but Juliet Douglas can, kindness and efficiency and caring.

Sloth sees that in those around her, fighting and love; hope and need; loss and determination. In herself? Fading. And reality. It's probably better that Sloth cannot really be anyone of her own, she reasons; after all, she has the look of truth.

So Sloth, she thinks, if you're not human or monster, what are you? Do you even really exist if you're not _her_? And Sloth, she thinks, yes.

She will haunt herself.

Humanity is the only option, even though it won't happen and as long as _Trisha _has her existence, Sloth will never have her own. But she still cannot imagine _accepting _it. She knows her options.

Empathy, understanding, tolerance, coveting- all are humans' traits. All are Sloth's traits. She cannot truly use them; in a sense, they are not made to last. Neither is she, she's made to do a job and do it well, and if she can't, then made to be destroyed. Sloth knows more than given credit for.

So Sloth goes over Dante's promise, and her own useless hope of clarity and freedom and peace.

But she knows the truth. She wakes up with it and goes to bed with it and is on speaking terms with it and lives with it and knows she will die as she is with it. So it's almost a blessing, Sloth decides, somewhat manipulative and somewhat trying to survive, that she can accept that the promise is already broken. No matter how much she'd like (or need) it to be the other way.

The soldier tells her he's second lieutenant something or other and she will remember his name for later records, and Sloth thinks, I am Sloth, and she thinks, forget my name.

Promises, in a way, are like humans, and in a way, they are like hope. Sloth can bring herself to understand that. They seem so nice, so ideal and untouchable, something she'd want. But eventually, promises break and humans go bad and hopes turn in for truth and humanity is just a word, and they're so nice because they fade away long before she must.

Sloth knows they don't matter as much as they would in a better world. Do you know what Sloth knows more than anything else?

All these things fade away and blend together and even though she'd like them to they don't really matter and after a while they all begin to look the same.


End file.
